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This Week's Sermon THE THIRD SUNDAY after EPIPHANY 25 January 2009 "This Is God's Time" Mark 1:14-20 LSB Series B Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

As I watched part of the inauguration on Tuesday one of the commentators suggested that this historic moment might be due to the hand of God. I had chosen the title of this sermon already before these events and I worried that some might think I was referring to the political hopes and aspirations of our nation. Whether God grants his blessing on our nation's hopes and dreams will be forthcoming, but we are speaking this morning about the kingdom of God as it was announced by our Lord Jesus Christ at the beginning of his earthly ministry. We are speaking of God's time according to Christ's definition.

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:15, ESV)

So simply Jesus begins by announcing that his bursting on the scene of this world's history is the climax of all time. The Greeks had a wonderful word which we translate as "time;" it is kairos. Kairos means a definite, fixed time, a time set by God for a particular event. In this case, it means a "welcome time" [BAG, A Greek-English Lexicon of the NT, p. 395]. The coming of Jesus marks a favorable time for mankind because Jesus fulfilled God's righteous demands by carrying all mankind's burden of sin and guilt to the cross where he removed it by his innocent suffering and death. Jesus' announcement says that God's favorable time, his kingdom, is upon the world. "This Is God's Time."

Because of that, it is time for all to repent and to believe the Gospel, but what is it to repent? You hear the word, but do you understand what it means? Luther wrote:

3 This is what the beginning of true repentance is like. Here man must hear such a judgment as this: "You are all of no account. Whether you are manifest sinners or saints, you must all become other than you now are and do otherwise than you now do, no matter who you are and no matter how great, wise, mighty, and holy you may think yourselves. Here no one is godly," etc.¹

Yet, many ask, "Repent of what?" One of the big problems of our age is that people no longer see the need to repent because the Law of God has been silenced. The accusatory function of the Law has been muted in favor of self-esteem. In 2001 Roy Baumeister, a professor at Case Western-Reserve University, wrote in the Scientific American [April 2001] that people with high self-esteem tend to have low self-control. As an example, he said that criminals do not suffer from low self-esteem. They are dangerous because they are narcissists, people who believe that what they want they deserve to have. Some have warned that Americans have become a nation of narcissists, and when that happens the call to repent falls on deaf ears.

But Jesus tells all people everywhere to repent. You are to repent, not only for your wrong actions, but also for your wrong words, and even your wrong thoughts, your self-centered thoughts, words, and deeds. While the rest of the world cannot see your thoughts, God does and he condemns even your sinful thoughts.

Without a diagnosis of your condition, you would die in your sin with no hope. A man who has hacked open his leg with a chainsaw knows that he needs help. The gushing blood speaks to him. The man with cancer may be unaware of his predicament until serious symptoms arise. The Law diagnoses your condition in whatever situation you are, whether you realize you are dying or not. "Repent!" "This is God's Time." God calls on you to confess your sins, to acknowledge them, to own up to them and to your condition.

God's remedy is quickly spoken: "believe in the Gospel." To believe in the Gospel is to believe in a person, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is content of the Gospel. When Jesus began his earthly ministry at his baptism, God's kairos came to a climax. Here is the time for which God's people had waited for many centuries, ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin. With the arrival of Jesus God's time had fully arrived. There were no more predictions, no more longings, no more hopes still unfulfilled. Here everything was in the person of God's Son, Jesus born at Bethlehem.

This extraordinary message is the focus of the Church's work. As soon as Jesus announced the arrival of God's kairos in his person, he recruited men to carry on the work once he ascended back to the Father in heaven. He would train them to bring this message to the entire world. God's Time meant God's action in the world.

During the past election season we heard a lot about qualifications of persons to be the president of the nation. We are convinced that we should elect qualified persons, not merely to that office but also to other elected offices, but there seems to be a certain imbalance in our nation because those who shape the news seem to believe that only Ivy League graduates are smart enough to lead the nation. Persons who graduate from those schools seem to have a disproportionate representation in the high offices of the federal government. A non-Ivy Leaguer has almost no chance of being appointed to the Supreme Court, for example. Rightly or wrongly, many believe that only such persons are smart enough to hold these positions. If you are an Ivy Leaguer you get a free pass. If you graduated from a state university, you fall into the second tier of qualifications, at the least.

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee he called Simon and Andrew to be his disciples. Mark records rather simply, "for they were fishermen." Fishermen! What an extraordinary thing Jesus did! He didn't go to the Temple to find the most learned scholars of the Torah, but to the seashore, and picked the most unlikely of candidates, fishermen. And he also chose a tax collector and other unremarkable men. For such an extraordinary mission Jesus chose the most ordinary men! Instead of catching fish, they will be fishers of men. They will bring people into God's net, God's kingdom. It is an interesting metaphor, one with which we are familiar because we've heard it so many times. But do you truly grasp what it means?

Why did Jesus chose these men? It wasn't that they were more educated than the rest because they weren't. It wasn't that they were more virtuous than others because we know the reputations that some of them had. It wasn't that they were more virtuous than the rest because we see in the Gospels that they are as sinful as the next man. To have them carry out this all-important mission at this critical kairos baffles all rationality.

It's all about grace. Jesus called men who were nothing so that they could never brag about themselves in this most vital mission the world had ever known. They would have to depend solely upon their Lord for everything. They would have to speak the words Jesus gave them, not their own. In short, it would be God who would work in them and through them. Jesus himself would equip them for the task, giving them the words he had first received from his Father in heaven. He would supply the strength, the wisdom, the patience, and the courage they would need as they stood before emperors and kings and confessed that salvation is found in no one else. He would go with them to their deaths as they confessed him.

God's kairos required such men. Jesus recruited dying men to speak to dying people. The disciples received direct training for three years from Jesus, being educated by the Lord himself. He put his word in their mouths, calling all people to repent and believe the Gospel. That same word of repentance and faith in Christ the ascended Lord Jesus still puts into the mouths of the men he chooses. He trains them in a different way today but they are still trained by him. We send them to the seminary and out on vicarage to train them as much as humanly possible. There is nothing extraordinary about any of them personally, but because they march under the Lord's orders, what they say and do in Christ's name and by his command has eternal consequences. When pastors baptize, absolve, preach, or administer the Sacrament of the Altar, it is the same as Christ baptizing, absolving, preaching, and administering the Sacrament because they speak for Christ and in his place. The old hymn says it so well:

614 "As Surely as I Live," God Said

5 The words which absolution give
Are His who died that we might live;
The minister whom Christ has sent
Is but His humble instrument.

6 When ministers lay on their hands,
Absolved by Christ the sinner stands;
He who by grace the Word believes
The purchase of His blood receives.

Text and Music: Public domain
Created by Lutheran Service Builder © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.

Even today, right now, is still God's time, his kairos, the time when he still calls on the world to repent, to put away sin and to turn to Christ, who alone has forgiveness of sins and eternal life. That kairos will one day end, as the Apostle writes in our Epistle today:

"This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short." (1 Corinthians 7:29, ESV)

When our Lord returns in glory, then the day of God's grace will be over forever. There will be no more time to repent and be forgiven, to find refuge in Christ. But right now, in this hour, it is still God's Time. It is fulfilled in the preaching of Law and Gospel. It is fulfilled in your ears and in your lives this very moment. "This Is God's Time!" "Repent and believe in the Gospel!"

¹Theodore G. Tappert, The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 304 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000, c1959).